The Social Diary

by Ros Reines

  It was time to check out the room and unpack. The first thing I noticed was there were no signs that Daniel had ever been here. There were no clothes in the wardrobe, no toiletries in the bathroom and nothing personal beside the bed. He must have been staying somewhere else since he’d arrived at Ayers Rock. It was a little unsettling but I told myself not to worry.

  I quickly changed and headed back out to the pool area in my high-wedged sandals, which put a decent distance between my foot and the ground. Nevertheless I studied the earth as I went along in case I stepped on something horrific. This is an adventure, I told myself, think of all the great material you are going to have the next time you have a night out with the girls, who would no doubt think I was a total lunatic to be here in the first place. Claiming a lounge as close to the pool as possible, I spread out my towel and tried to tune out the squeals of the children playing nearby.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss Stephens?’

  I must have dozed off for a few minutes (that would be the champagne) because I sat up with a start at the sound of Jed’s voice. Was he my personal butler or something? He was standing in front of me, his uniform more garish than ever in the bright sunshine.

  ‘I have an urgent message for you.’ He handed over a sealed envelope and then lingered, no doubt hoping for another generous tip, but this time he was out of luck.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I said, turning away from him and sliding my finger under the sealed flap of the envelope.

  Please call me. I’m worried about you. It was signed Rachael, and she had even included her phone number, just in case I had forgotten. Rachael and I had been friends since our first year of high school, when we’d discovered a shared love of music and English, and a mutual loathing for maths. We weren’t part of the cool group or really any group at all—we were content just to hang out in the off-limits area together and talk about our favourite books and bands. We’d written hundreds of letters after I moved to London, and when I returned to Sydney we took up where we had left off.

  I realised I’d forgotten to call her as soon as I’d arrived, as I’d promised I would, so I returned to my room. (I probably needed a respite from the sun anyway.) She answered the phone on the second ring.

  ‘Savannah? What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ I responded. ‘And I’m not really exaggerating when I say that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ There was a note of dread in her voice.

  ‘Daniel had a driver pick me up and I am settled into a lovely suite at this brand-new resort, but I haven’t seen him yet. Apparently, he was called into some kind of top level meeting he couldn’t get out of.’ It actually made me feel better to share this information with someone else (even if I had embellished it a little bit to make it seem more official) and I welcomed her indignant outburst.

  ‘What?! You haven’t even seen him yet? What did I tell you? There is something not right about this.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said, not very convincingly. ‘I’m having an adventure,’ I said limply.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it. Take care of yourself and ring me back when he does turn up, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, I’d better go. You know what Saturday’s like; we’re rushed off our feet.’

  For a moment I wished that I were sitting at a table at Frenchy’s, nibbling at a salad and contemplating a day of shopping and browsing around Paddington. Instead, I was stuck in the outback waiting for a man whose track record with women was looking dodgier by the minute. It was a good thing that Daniel and I had such a strong connection otherwise I would have really started to panic.

  Overcome by loneliness and anxiety—what had I been thinking coming all the way here for the weekend?—I retrieved the champagne from the ice bucket and poured some into the glass that had been set out for Daniel. Then I polished off the rest of the cheese platter.

  Changing into a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and runners, with a cap anchoring my ponytail, I headed back outside. Since I was here, I might as well do a little bit of sightseeing.

  The reception area was mostly deserted when I walked in to ask about tours to Ayers Rock and the Olgas.

  ‘We have a sunset tour departing late afternoon,’ the man at the concierge desk informed me. ‘Would you like me to book you into one? There are three to choose from, including a picnic dinner in the desert.’

  ‘No, not right now,’ I replied after some hesitation. ‘I’ll just have to see what my friend is up to. By the way, would you happen to know if there are guests by the name of Alex and Jacqueline Evans who are checked in here?’ Wherever the Evanses were staying, Daniel would probably be there as well, I reasoned.

  ‘The names aren’t familiar,’ the concierge responded, ‘but we do have a lot of guests at the moment. In fact, we’re nearly at capacity. Would you like to try to leave a message for them?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. Thank you.’

  ‘Let me know if I can help you further, and don’t leave it till the last minute if you want to join a sunset tour; the places fill up fast,’ he advised kindly. ‘In the meantime, if you’re keen to see some of the area, why not take a ride on the complimentary shuttle bus that connects all the accommodation at Ayers Rock? It also stops at the shops.’

  That sounded like a reasonable idea. Thanking him, I went outside and stood in front of the hotel to await the promised shuttle.

  But what about the flies? Sensing a new playground—my face—they began to attack me so ferociously that I started to think that maybe one of those netted hats with a cork or two wasn’t such a bad idea. Perhaps I could use it afterwards for a new photo by-line in the paper as the perfect piece of head gear for tackling the social scene.

  It was around four o’clock when I finally trudged back to the room, almost cursing its distance from the reception because of the heat and the flies. I was half expecting to see

  Daniel sprawled out on the bed waiting for me when I walked in, but unfortunately the room was exactly how I had left it.

  I threw myself into the shower, watching with some fascination as the red dust washed off me and down the drain. It felt like I had been on Mars.

  Afterwards, remarkably clean and fresh now, I lay down on the couch and drank some more champagne, this time pairing it with the KitKat I’d bought from the tiny shopping centre I had discovered on the bus ride. I browsed through the copy of the Women’s Weekly I’d also purchased along with a couple of crappy souvenirs—an Ayers Rock snow dome and an Indigenous print tea towel as a reminder of this trip. So far I was having a great, romantic getaway with myself—was this some sort of joke? A message from the universe? If it was I wasn’t exactly in receiving mode. I must have dozed off, because I awoke to the sound of the phone. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was 6.30 pm.

  ‘Savannah?’

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘It’s so good to hear your voice. Are you okay? I’m so sorry that I haven’t been there to spend some time with you.’

  A terrible fear gripped my guts. Maybe he wasn’t even in Ayers Rock! That would explain why there were none of his clothes in the closet. ‘Where are you?’ I said, my voice sounding almost half strangled with the panic that was rising up in me.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry, Savannah, but a crisis has come up and we’re all trying to work out how to deal with it. We’ve been going hard all day and we’ve still not resolved anything. I won’t be able to get there in time for dinner, but I will be back some time tonight.’

  ‘What?’ I was staring hard at a hideous glass vase on the cabinet, trying to trace the swirling coloured patterns to stop myself from bursting into tears.

  Daniel hesitated, his voice a little more gentle now. ‘I know, I dragged you all the way up here, but if you only knew what was going on you would understand how serious it is. I really have no choice.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I thought about Chloe Lovejoy’s girlfriend and how Daniel had just walked out of her life one day when
she had thought the only mystery surrounding him would be what kind of engagement ring he would choose. At least they seemed to have had a solid relationship. He was doing the disappearing act on me after just a couple of lost nights together, leaving me high and dry during a supposedly dirty weekend. It just didn’t make any sense. I suppressed a sniffle, draining that bottle of bubbles had made me slightly maudlin. Perhaps I was just being selfish now when he was clearly dealing with a catastrophe? I should be more caring—well, I never said that I was Mother Teresa.

  ‘Savannah?’

  ‘Yes, Daniel.’ It was still hard to hide the fact that I was severely pissed with him. I had so much going on, with people attacking me all over town—the last thing I needed was to be let down by someone who I’d thought really cared. And, yes, I knew how pathetic that sounded, but Daniel was supposed to be in my corner and not aiming the blows.

  ‘Why don’t you order yourself something nice from room service, charge it to the room, and I’ll be there later on tonight.’

  There were a lot of things that I wanted to say, and a lot I wanted to ask him, but in the end I just told him not to worry, that I was fine, and then I put down the phone. But I was damned if I was going to stay cooped up in this room all night like a hired entertainer; I’d spent far too much time in it already.

  Changing into one of the dresses I had planned to wear for Daniel for our romantic night out, I did some running repairs to my face, grabbed my bag and headed out towards the main hotel building. Taking a sunset tour was out of the question because I had now missed the departure time, but at least the hotel restaurant, the Billabong, was open. Even so, I was not quite ready for what confronted me when I walked through the door.

  As the noted author and wit Dorothy Parker once put it, what fresh hell was this? The Billabong was wrong on so many levels, starting with the piped Indigenous music and the themed decor, which was supposed to look like a bush camp in the outback. The seats had hessian covers resembling swags, there was a fake campfire in the middle of the room and papier-mâché kangaroos were planted around the edges. Surveying the scene, for a moment I thought about heading back to the hated room again and trying to find something on television. If I hadn’t felt so depressed about my lost weekend, I might have found the Billabong amusing, something to write up in a column setting out why themed restaurants were a bad idea.

  ‘Do you have a reservation?’ asked the cheerful young blonde girl at the desk. She was dressed in the hideous hotel uniform with the addition of an Akubra planted on her head. Her name-tag read Heidi.

  ‘No, sorry, Heidi, I haven’t. I just came in here on the spur of the moment,’ I apologised. ‘But I am staying at the hotel and I won’t be long—I’m just after a quick meal.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ she said with a smile. ‘We can always fit in our guests. How many of you are there?’

  ‘Actually, there’s just me.’

  She looked at me for a minute as if to say, You’re eating by yourself on a Saturday night in a resort? What kind of loser are you, anyway? But she recovered herself quickly. ‘No problem. Come this way.’

  Seated at a table on the edge of the room, I looked around. It was so early that it was family feeding time, and I thought I recognised some of the groups who had been around the pool earlier on. Piles of half-eaten chips, bread and strands of spaghetti had collected on the floor around these tables, marking out their territory. It was an ad for contraception right there.

  ‘Can I bring you a drink, miss, while you wait for your friend?’

  A young waiter was standing in front of me eagerly awaiting my order. I felt like telling him that if we waited for my friend to show up I would probably die of thirst and actually that was a very sore point. I really didn’t need any more alcohol, having single-handedly dispatched the bottle of champagne in the room, but I had to get through this ordeal somehow. Perhaps just a glass . . .

  ‘Sure, a glass of house champagne would be nice.’

  ‘Great, I’ll just get it for you.’

  I looked at the menu, which was themed as well. It was hard to choose which dish was the least appetising: Bogong Damper with Wattle Seed, Witchetty Grub Pasta or Kangaroo Pâté. Ugh! The most normal-looking dish was Grilled Barramundi, so that’s what I ordered.

  Two glasses of champagne later, I had not only demolished the fish but also an entire bread basket, a salad and a slice of chocolate tart. The waiter, who probably felt sorry for me, brought out a complimentary glass of champagne to have with a handful of chocolate mints. If Daniel ever showed up it wouldn’t be attractive as I probably smelt like a wine bar. I was going to have to ingest an entire bottle of Listerine when I returned to my accommodation.

  As I stared at the dumb fake campfire with its flames flickering in the centre of the restaurant, I made up my mind that if Daniel did not make it to the room tonight, I was going to book myself on the first flight out of here tomorrow. Granted, it was a huge waste of a trip to the spectacular Red Centre, but visiting Ayers Rock no longer appealed to me—not by myself. It was like visiting the Taj Mahal solo.

  Having made this decision, I felt quite empowered. Sometime in the future, I would probably be able to turn this experience into a funny story to amuse my friends at dinner parties when the subject turned to being stood up by men. We would all laugh, which would take the misery and the sting out of the experience.

  But that was sometime in the future, and I returned to my room as miserable as when I’d left it. As I passed the other guests kicking back in their villas—talking, playing music, swaying around with glasses of wine in their hands and chatting excitedly about the great day they’d just had, I felt even more like an outsider. What the hell was I doing here? My room was in darkness, but at least the message light was flashing on the phone. I expected to hear another update from Daniel on his further delayed ETA, but it was just Rachael again, wanting to know exactly what was going on. Would I please call her immediately.

  ‘Phone me before you go to bed,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll be up late anyway.’

  I just didn’t have the energy to listen to her say ‘I told you so’, so I just ripped off my clothes, climbed into bed and was soon out cold. I didn’t hear the door open and was only dimly aware that someone had entered the room and was standing by the bed, staring down at me. I should have jumped up and screamed, but through my champagne haze it was a struggle even to get my eyes open.

  ‘Savannah?’

  Daniel had finally shown up and was now sliding into the bed next to me, but I had no words for him. I allowed him to wrap his arms around me and to spoon me with his body but I was too out of it to respond.

  It was some time in the early hours of the morning when I finally came to with a parched throat and a seriously throbbing head. I disentangled myself from Daniel’s embrace and dragged myself to the bathroom to find some Panadol in my toiletries bag. Looking at my face in the mirror gave me a fright. My eye make-up was smudged (I hadn’t bothered to take it off) and there was an indentation on my face from the pillow. I washed my face, cleaned my teeth and gargled almost the entire bottle of mouthwash, then doused myself in cologne. I still looked a bit of a wreck but I was passable considering it wasn’t even really morning yet.

  Daniel stirred when I climbed back into the bed, holding myself slightly rigid on my side of it. I hadn’t forgiven him for getting me all the way up here and only showing up in the middle of the night.

  ‘Savannah, I’m so sorry.’ Daniel woke briefly and reached out for me again, almost crushing one of my arms. ‘I promise I’ll make it up to you.’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ I said stiffly, hating myself for being so chilly and needy before falling back into a restless sleep.

  When I next woke up, the time on the bedside console said 4.30 am. I was going to get out of bed at 6 and try to organise an early flight back. It didn’t seem to matter anymore that he had shown up. I’d had enough.

  But it was 7 am by the time I woke
again. Daniel was still out of it, so I tiptoed back into the bathroom, hit the shower and pulled on a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt.

  Daniel finally woke just as I had finished packing my bag.

  ‘Savannah? What’s happening?’ he said, sitting up in bed and wiping the sleep out of his eyes. I tried not to salivate over his naked body; he might belong in a Chesty Bond commercial, but he was still the guy who had stood me up during our dirty weekend.

  ‘I’ve decided to head back to Sydney early,’ I said coldly. ‘Do you know if there are any flights?’

  ‘There’s one around lunchtime,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m going to order some coffee and something to eat. You can’t just run away. We need to talk.’

  A few hours later, fed, caffeinated, consoled and loved up by Daniel, I was in a hire car on the way to the airport. Alex and Jacqueline Evans were in the midst of a crisis, he had explained; they were fighting to save their company, with the banks no longer willing to extend a line of credit. He ended up telling me much more than he’d planned to because I had been so upset.

  ‘But I thought the Evanses were rolling in money?’ I said, stunned by his dire revelation. ‘And, anyway, I thought that you were only a consultant and not a key part of the business.’

  ‘Well, actually, I’m a little bit more than a consultant. I do have a stake in the resorts.’

  He had regarded me intently then, and for an instant I began to see another side of him, a seriousness surrounding his laid-back persona and his beach boy appeal. Glancing at his pager, which was lying mute on the coffee table (why hadn’t I noticed it before now?), he had picked it up to check whether the light was on before turning back to me.

  ‘Look, Savannah, if any of this leaks out to the media, then the investors will call time on the company and it will all come crashing down on us. You must promise not to write about this—and, just as important, don’t breathe a word of it to anyone. I’ll be back in Sydney by the end of the week and hopefully by then we’ll have found a solution and life can return to normal again.’